He names it Illahee-Chinook for “home place”-but locals call it the Mad House and the Sawdust Pile. Her lavish profanity in six languages earns her the sobriquet “Mother Damnable.” By some accounts she later adds a brothel upstairs and becomes “Madame Damnable.”ġ861 San Francisco brothel operator John Pinnell (aka Pennell), opens Seattle’s first rough-hewn bawdy house on sawdust fill just below Mill Street (now Yesler Way).
She manages the Felker House at First and Main, the infant town’s first inn and, when required, courthouse.
This is the chronicle of a city built on sin.ġ853 Young Mary Conklin washes up in Seattle after her whaling-captain husband maroons her at Port Townsend. Prostitution runs as deep as rain through Seattle’s history. Long before Seattle made jets, software, or coffee, it built crib houses, box houses, and brothels-lots of them, including the world’s biggest.
